Garage a silent reminder of a grisly crime

Dick Blume/The Post-Standard This is the former site of Big Al’s Auto Sales, at 413 S. West St., where two men were murdered on Feb. 12, 1991.There it sits, a gravestone in a neighborhood that’s fighting back against its image as a bad place to be.
The little auto repair shop — Big Al’s Auto Sales — has been closed since Feb.12, 1991, the day Ronald Lardeo, 33, and his friend Michael Nappi, 43, were hacked to death inside the shop at 413 S. West St. Big Al was Lardeo’s dad, Albert.
Witnesses told of a gruesome crime. The shop was covered in blood. “They had been beaten very badly, “ Deputy Police Chief Frank Sardino explained. “They were pretty much unidentifiable.” No one who’s still around can explain the crime. No one is willing to try on a motive.
Officially, the case remains open, unsolved. It’s been that way 19 years next week. “There have been leads, but there’s nothing new on the case, “ according to Sgt. Tom Connellan, a police spokesman. A detective carries Lardeo-Nappi as an open file.
Fran Capozzi watches and waits.
Fran says Ronnie Lardeo and Mike Nappi were his friends. They’d met working at Nine Mile Point nuclear reactors in Oswego County. The fact this is one of the city department’s few unsolved murders annoys him but what can he do, but check in with the cops once a year? “I miss’em terrible, “ Fran says of his pals.
Fran only guesses at why this happened. He’s pretty sure robbery wasn’t the motive.
Investigators agree. “More violence than you associate with a robbery, “ one of them commented years ago. Fran thinks Ronnie Lardeo was the target. He was found in the office right inside the front door, beaten with a blunt instrument. “Poor Mike (Nappi) was in the wrong spot, “ Fran explains. He was found in the repair bay, apparently working on his car.
Fran was told that Mike appeared to try to get away from his attacker. The cops even found bloody handprints under the car he was repairing. They also gathered almost 1,100 fingerprints (it was a repair shop, after all); they didn’t lead to anyone. Ronnie Lardeo was known to carry a big roll on him and gamble. His favorite spot, according to Fran, was a shop on Butternut Street. Did that habit connect to the murders?
Lardeo’s Jeep Cherokee was ditched close by in a parking lot at St. Lucy Church. In June, someone found Lardeo’s wallet in the waste beds along Onondaga Lake near the fairgrounds. His pager was discovered among weeds on the other side of the lake in February 1992.
No doubt, police worked the case hard. They had index cards for more than 1,000 interviews, including drivers from neighborhood roadblocks.
“It’s incredible, “ Capt. Dick Walsh, head of the detective unit, said a year later. “We interview all those people in the roadblocks and not one of them saw anyone going into the garage that night or driving away in Ron’s truck.” Police figure the two men died in late afternoon.
Officers chased down one name, but they couldn’t find a person to go with it. Fran Capozzi remembers investigators showing him the picture of a “long-haired kid” he didn’t know. Personally, he thinks the murders were a “one-man show.”
The fate of the repair shop, a hardy survivor all these years, remains in doubt. It’s on a parking lot shared by King and King Architects and Steri-Pharma LLC in a neighborhood named the Salt District. The big “For Sale” sign out front in 1991 is gone. If King and King buys Big Al’s, likely the company will tear it down. It’s an uncomfortable reminder of a history neighbors would like to forget.